That had been the situation until the 86th minute, when news filtered through from France.

“We played a great game and had the illusion that we were going to qualify, then Borussia scored right at the death,” Fernandez told Sky Sport Italia.

“We continued playing in order to impose our style on Arsenal to the very end. We knew that we had made some mistakes in terms of concentration against Udinese last week and were more careful today, allowing Arsenal almost nothing in attack.”